Gryphus

November
Eastern Griffon Kingdom
Filmont, Army Group South

Doctor’s Cellar was a dingy, low quality bar, and as such a griffoness in a fancy dress was a weird sight that instantly caught everyone’s attention. When Canales joined the half-drunken singing that vaguely followed the music coming from a record player, most griffs lost their interest. There were dozens of soldiers on leave in the bar, wearing their dress uniforms, and Canales’ nonexistent singing voice immediately revealed her as one of them.

The heavy smoke of tobacco filled the air, and both Canales and Greendown had contributed to it with a few smokes themselves. After the initial rounds of drinks and taking part in the drunken revelry going on around them the two had moved to a more secluded corner of the large room, from where they could mostly see the bar desk, and a small stage standing directly next to it.

“Say,” Canales chuckled, a slight alcohol-induced warmth on her cheeks. “Do you think we’ll see a dancer on that stage?”

“One in a leotard?” Greendown chuckled and chugged down a part of his beer. “Preferably shaking her flank at the audience?”

“Seems like that kind of place. And I wouldn’t mind if it was less than a leotard” Canales observed. She had been pleasantly surprised when she found the place had white wine in its stores, and even though it only had one variety, she was happy to get herself drunk off of it.

Greendown’s chuckle turned into a burst of laughter. “That would be Red Hare’s thing. Three blocks down the street.”

“So you have been there?” Canales teased.

“Yes,” Greendown answered bluntly. “Drinks are pretty bad, but the dancers are cute.”

The two griffons had not explicitly agreed to anything, but there was a mutual understanding that the discussion would not leave the table. As a former section leader and second in command they had learned to understand each other’s thoughts. And as the evening dragged on said thoughts and talk drifted back to the war.

“How’s it been like to be a platoon leader?” Greendown asked.

“Different,” Canales answered. She downed the rest of her wine, swaying slightly from drunkenness. “More difficult, but I’ve managed. It’s a lot less personal with more griffs to lead. I’ve had to give more responsibility to the squad leaders.”

“Including Tasca?”

The whine that left Canales’ beak belonged neither to an officer or a fine lady, but it perfectly described her sentiment regarding the dead weight in her platoon. The only plausible explanation for him was that there had been a lack of corporals, resulting in lowered standards and Tasca’s promotion by default after three years.

“Including him.”

November
Luna Ocean
Almirante Griselda, Republican Navy

Senior Corporal Elena Wingerni shivered in the crow’s nest, leaning against the guardrail. The light brown griffoness had raised the collar of her navy-blue pea coat to shield herself from the wind, and in place of the navy cap she had a warm wool hat. Her friend stood next her in the cramped nest, watching the starboard side of the ship. Cold wind blasted at the two, but it was something they just had to bear. Elena comforted herself with the knowledge that snow hadn’t yet started falling, so she was not dealing with the winter coldness just yet.

Almirante Griselda was an old protected cruiser, meaning it had only an armored turtleback deck deep inside the hull to protect its most important parts from enemy fire. The lack of protection came with the benefit of speed, and Griselda was incredibly fast for a ship of her size. Although Elena had heard of some Equestrian battlecruisers being almost as fast. The ship’s upper decks were covered with wood, which was still unbearably cold in the autumn sea. Behind the two griffons three chimneys belched black smoke into the clear night sky. It was a moonless night, which made spotting anything even harder.

On the other hand it made it easier to deliver supplies to Fort Esmeralda keeping the Northern navy bottled in its little bay.

“Nothing,” her friend grumbled. The coast was on his side, and the chances of anything being in that direction were slim. “Just land.”

“Then you can dream of what to do when you get there,” Elena laughed, resting her head on her elbows. Unbeknownst to her, her younger brother was doing the exact same thing in Griffonstone on the last evening of his leave.

Far away she spotted the silhouette of a lighthouse. Elena chuckled to herself. Her shift was ending soon, and then she could get back to her bunk. She clearly needed it, with her mind Cand eyes playing tricks on her. The griffon shook her head and returned to watching the horizon. She spotted another lighthouse. Ice flooded the griffoness’ veins. One illusion was something. Two needed a closer look.

Elena leaned into the brass voicepipe of the crow’s nest. “Watch, nest.” When no answer came she repeated the call.

“Nest, watch, speak,” came the voice of the Watchmaster on the bridge. He sounded grumpy.

“Spotted something out of place, bearing three-three-zero. Requesting additional eyes that way.”

“Request received, relaying. Keep an eye out.”

Elena could only hope he had taken her words seriously. She looked through the large binoculars attached to the side of the crow’s nest. They were not worth much in the darkness, but she needed any help. Taking the right bearing with a naked eye, she peered through the binoculars.

There were structures out there, maybe two miles away, and her tired brain had substituted them with lighthouses. She looked lower.

Those were waves breaking against a hull.

“Hey, have a look.” Protocol was to have someone else confirm a sighting whenever possible.

The two griffons shuffled about, and the pale red sailor had a look.

“I see it,” he grimaced. “Watch, nest.”

“Watch here.”

“A ship spotted, bearing three-three-zero, distance less than a nautical mile. Double confirmation.”

There was silence on the other end of the pipe, but Elena was an experienced sailor that had served her entire career on Almirante Griselda. The old admiral’s soul had just stirred. There were no friendly vessels in the area. And just as Elena had felt the old admiral awaken, she felt as she readied for the first blow.

The protected cruiser had two armored turrets, both bearing a pair of six-inch guns, and with a frightening grinding that coursed through the vessel the turrets rotated. The watch had taken the warning seriously. Likely Commander Grimwing was being roused from her sleep, assuming she hadn’t already taken control, and the sleeping griffons were pulled from their bunks to bring the ship to battle readiness.

The first shot did not come from the mighty turrets.

There was a flash and a boom as one of the six three-inch guns on the ship’s port side fired. Two and a half seconds later the night turned to day. The gun had overshot, but against the backdrop of the falling flare she could see another ship, already turning away from Griselda, whose searchlights were coming to life.

The great beams of white light tracked the fleeing ship, illuminating the gold dagger it bore on its black ensign.

The completely unarmored cruiser Grostchapel had no desire to stand and fight. The rest of Griselda’s cannons opened fire, deafening Elena with a wall of noise. She could see the sea boil around Grostchapel, pillars of water exploding upwards where shells fell, but none scored a hit. The admiral was old, and she lacked proper fire control mechanisms, leaving every gun to do its own thing.

It was not effective, but it looked amazing.

The wonder lasted for a few more minutes as Grostchapel tried to slip into the night, her own guns blazing away. An even older ship, she had no chance of hitting from such a distance. Then something massive streaked past the crow’s nest with the sound of a runaway locomotive. Elena hit the deck in blind terror, her friend falling on top of her.

Something had just overshot the ship.

The two climbed up, trying to look for what had fired at them. A ship’s performance came from all its parts working together, and the greatest incentive for cooperation was the fear of death. No individual sailor could surrender when the fighting got too fierce, and most would either live or sink with their ship. And just trying to do something kept the helpless fear at bay.

The two grabbed the railing as the crow’s nest swung hard to port, the ship maneuvering in the same direction to make itself a more difficult target. Instead of following the zig with a zag like Elena expected and braced for, Griselda kept turning.

Flame and smoke flashed in the distance. Sea splashed where the old admiral would have been had the captain corrected the course earlier. These were accurate shots.

The dread filling Elena turned to outright terror as the searchlights spotted the third combatant, only to turn off across the ship. Commander Grimwing had seen the same thing as they had. Whereas Grostchapel had been utterly helpless against Griselda, the admiral had now found someone that overmatched her, and every other ship in the navy.

Griffons had never been masters of sea power, and had no interest in that. Still, a deterrence needed to be backed by strength.

Rey Grover was a domestic design, and the only armored cruiser in the Royal Griffon Navy even before the war. Named for the Kingdom’s half-mythical founder, she carried two times Almirante Griselda’s crew, and many times her firepower. What had flown over the two sailors in the crow’s nest had been a ten-inch shell from one of Grover’s main guns. Had it hit them directly, the two would have been evaporated before the shell could even explode.

And if the ship decided to turn its side to the old admiral, she would be torn apart by Grover’s broadsides, where every single cannon was larger than anything Griselda carried. Her rear turret firing, Almirante Griselda fled, abandoning her mission. The operator of the wireless telegraph had already sent a hasty message to the rest of the AGS aligned ship in Luna Ocean. Now its operator was signaling for Fort Esmeralda, to let them know of what was happening.

Fort Esmeralda’s wireless telegraph operator perked up as his headset beeped a series of high-pitched sounds. His free claw moved automatically, scribbling the morse code on paper.

Lady to Rock. Almirante Griselda was calling them. Grostchapel and Grover spotted southeast of the fortress. The message listed the exact location of the two ships and when they had been spotted. The Lance Corporal wrote everything down, and prepared to write a clear transcript of the message to his superiors so they could read it in the morning. It was a shame that the two enemy ships had managed to slip past them, but what could anyone do about that? The network around the fortress was broken, leaving it as a lone link of a broken chain. The griffon returned to his duties, ultimately unconcerned by things he could not affect.

November
Eastern Griffon Kingdom
Camp Boreas, 19th Regiment, Army Group South

Talonico sat at the desk in the squad’s barracks room, pencil resting at the end of a finished letter. He had already penned one letter to his family earlier, and now a second one to Silvestro was ready. It had taken time to know what to say. The one for his family was superficial, mostly meant to calm down his parents.

It was Silvestro he poured his heart out to.

“Sil

I am happy to hear that you found an apartment all for yourself. Maybe I should have also become an electrician, there seems to be a high demand for you lot. Then again I would not have had the aptitude for it, and I would have shocked myself to a grave before the teacher even had a chance to yell at me.

I write these words before heading out to the front once again. We have spent the last few weeks training and resting, and death has not been present at every moment.

Back when we were at the front we lost griffons almost every day. We had to keep up with the daily routines even when there was always a chance that a shell might kill you without you ever realizing it. Battles were worse. One from my squad was wounded, and I worry for her. My old wound still aches, and I think hers will too. The pain keeps returning to my nightmares every now and then.”

The next part had taken the most thinking.

“I had mostly gotten used to the safety, but there was an accident. A poorly thrown training grenade exploded near me. Knocked me down, but had it been a little closer, the blast could have injured me. In a battle it would have killed me, and I could have done nothing. Maybe it was good preparation, because I will have to fear soon again. And added to that fear is misery. The winter is late, and that means it will be even harsher when it finally comes. Cold eats griffons alive.

I am sorry to start with such dreary words, but I need someone to read them. There are few happy things to write about here. So please tell me how things are at home. Tell me of the autumn rain hitting the streets, of how leaves fall to the ground in a gentle breeze. Tell me about your work, of the griffons you see there.

You remind me of the world beyond war.

Love, Nico”

Talonico set the pen down and folded the letter. He grabbed his greatcoat and left to pass the letter to the garrison post office.

November
Luna Ocean
Torpedo boat 029, Northern Navy

Captain Agosto was regretting her plan. Huddled in the back of torpedo boat 029 the artillery captain struggled against the need to vomit, unfamiliar with the rocking of the waves. The torpedo boat was part of a larger formation, organized for the particular mission. The dark shapes were barely visible around them through the gaps in the mass of griffons.

Most of the torpedo boat’s crew had been replaced with sailors from the sunken Reina Catalina. In addition to the complement of thirty needed to crew the boat, another thirty had been shoved on board, filling the boat to the brim. Among them was Agosto, to ensure that the raiding party would get the correct ammunition if they had to leave in a hurry.

“Final approach!” The message traveled across the passenger, and everyone braced or grabbed anything bolted down. Agosto followed suit. Engines roaring, the boat accelerated to its top speed, cutting through the waves. Agosto’s stomach sank as the vessel took to the air, crashing down after a three second flight and continuing its ride. Behind the flotilla of torpedo boats a quartet of warships opened fire, their guns lighting up the night. Far away two cruisers screened the raiders from enemy patrols.

Through the roar of engines and booming of guns Agosto could hear the distorted wail of a siren, and flashes of explosions as shells rocked the island.

The raiders’ success now depended on the naval guns. If they could suppress the defenders, the torpedo boats could make it to the supply harbor untouched. If the guns were left untouched, they would be massacred.

Tracers from a machine gun whipped past them.

“Prepare!”

The boat aimed for the gap between the breakwater and the edge of the harbor. Their route had been planned so that the final approach could be made in a direct route. Finally the boat’s weapons came to life. Ahail of machine gun and autocannon fire suppressed any potential defenders hiding among the crates or in the nearest buildings. The harbor was three hundred meters wide, and about as long, with enough room for two cargo ships, or a dozen torpedo boats.

Just when it seemed that they were about to crash into the wall the driver reversed the engine, slowing the boat down. Before they had come to a halt, the first sailors were spreading their wings.

“Catalina!” Cried the griffon at the bow of the vessel as she jumped ashore, invoking the name of the sunken cruiser the crew had been taken from. A shotgun blast splattered her brain into the sea.

Heedless of their friend falling to the cold sea, the rest of the raiding party swarmed the docks. Pistols and revolvers blazing they cut a swathe through the disoriented defenders who had not expected an attack.

Agosto rose last, escorted by a pair of sailors armed with machine pistols, similar to her normal one, but with an additional wooden foregrip, an extended magazine and the possibility of automatic fire. Both sailors had a gray helmet with their ship’s name written on the forehead.

They marched through the stone yard littered with bleeding bodies. Agosto had never before seen so much death. Once in a while she had been hit with counter-battery fire, but never there had been so many in one place. Steeling herself, Agosto walked past the corpses.

Beyond the harbor’s buildings rose a steep cliff some twenty meters tall, with a winding path rising to the top. Griffons too were forced to follow the path, designed so that defenders could lay down rifle fire on attackers from higher up, while anyone stupid enough to fly would be instantly cut down. That had worked before the widespread adoption of grenades.

The few defenders trying to set up a machine gun were killed quickly. Griffons streamed past the bodies. The sailors were all eager, but unused to fighting on land. Individuals followed whichever griffon had been their superior on their ship, but said superiors clearly had no idea what they were doing. The concept of infantry tactics seemed to be beyond any of them.

Coming at the end of the group, Agosto was not instantly killed by the stiffening resistance. She could see a dark field ahead of her. The captain had looked at the schematics of the fortress before the attack. The harbor was the weakest link in the defenses, but it was not completely neglected. Normally the approaches were protected by mines, but deciding that was not enough the engineers had added a simple stronghold to watch over the prepared path.

Beyond the field the ground would suddenly slope up, and dug into that slope was a moat surrounded by barbed wire. Anyone foolish enough to dive there for shelter would be killed by machine guns held in concrete bunkers, their sights running parallel to the moat. In a fully manned fort there would not be a single weak spot to exploit, for beyond the moat would be a trench with defenders ready to greet anyone that made it past the moat, and a trio of turrets housing a three-pounder cannon. In an undermanned fort however… According to the latest reports the guns had not yet been installed.

Beyond the thin line awaited the open backs of all the strongpoints on the island, with their casemates of ship-killing eight-inch guns and the ammo vaults underneath.

A flare shot to the sky, revealing the swarm blue-clad sailors running towards the barbed wire. Ahead of them sporadic rifle fire rippled across the trenchline.

There was an explosion among a group of sailors, cutting down several of them with fragments. The sudden flash of fire and smoke caught several griffons off guard, but not Agosto.

“Cannon!” the Captain yelled, sending griffons to cover. Another shot smashed into the ground, scattering dirt and grass over the prone griffs. An unlucky sergeant whimpered as a fragment buried itself into her back. Agosto noticed both explosions were small, limiting the caliber of the firing weapon. When the third one came, her experienced ear guided her to the origin of the shot, and she spotted the silhouette of the weapon against the night sky.

“Three-pounder, to the right!”

The sailors took that as their cue to attack, rising to overrun the gun. Seeing their intent, the enemy switched tactics. Instead of an explosive shot it fired a canister shot, turning the weapon into an oversized shotgun. A terrible hail of steel slammed into the brave idiots, and Agosto saw one jerk back from the force of the shot before keeling over.

“Commodore!” Agosto screamed as bullets whizzed past her head. The senior officer heard her shout and turned to look.

“Tell your troops to stay put, I’ll deal with the gun.”

Agosto crawled towards the gun, not bothering to see if the Commodore had listened or obeyed. Her bodyguard followed just behind her. The gun crew was clearly focused on firing as many shots as they could, and had not set up security for themselves. The weapon was hidden behind a small embankment, providing plenty of cover from the sailor’s bullets.

“Grenades,” Agosto whispered.

“Don’t have any,” her escort answered.

The Captain cursed. In that case they had to gamble. “Get right up to the berm, get ready to jump over.”

The trio got up to the berm undetected, slightly to the right of the cannon blasting away. In between the high-pitched barks of the cannon they could hear its crew talking, passing orders to one another.

“Get ready. Three, two, one.”

At the last word she bounced over the berm, pistol held ready and a prayer on her beak that the enemy was not looking her way. As she landed, her sights drifted to a young griffon turning to look at the sudden thump. Agosto pulled the trigger. Her bodyguards followed suit. They emptied their magazines in seconds. The bodies of the gun crew slumped over and around their weapon, dead.

“Give me more ammo,” Agosto ordered, and pulled one body off the gun's breech. The body was missing an eye, which was splattered on the cold steel along with much of her brain. Nausea welled inside the Captain. She dropped the corpse and grabbed the handwheels used to aim the weapon. As an artillery officer she was expected to have a basic understanding of every cannon in the army. The short barrel turned towards the muzzle flashes in the trenches.

“Here’s the ammo.”

Agosto opened the breech and pushed the shell inside.

“See how it works?”

“Yeah.”

She returned to the sights, grabbed the firing lever and pulled. The cannon spat out a shell, the barrel slamming back on its rails and dropping the empty cartridge. Some rifles in the trenches fell silent.

“Reload!”

While the sailor clumsily reloaded the cannon, Agosto rose to the berm, waving to the sailors’ leader. “Commodore! Get your griffs moving!”

The message seemed to make it through, and the wave of northerners rose again, charging the outnumbered defenders.

After firing a second shot Agosto decided they were too close to the enemy for her to dare a third one.

“Let’s get this thing moving.”

Its back open, the fortress fell a few hours later. Shaken and surprised, the garrison could not mount an organized defense. Small groups of prisoners were escorted to the main signal tower at the center of the island to an ever growing mass. With the fort deemed secure, Captain Agosto headed for the main magazine. The trench there showed some signs of fighting, but nobody had died in it. Finally the captain reached the door to the magazine, guarded by two griffons with shotguns hanging off their barrels.

Agosto was about to step inside when something caught her attention. An overwhelming stench of shit and blood reached her, even more powerful than anywhere else at the island. She turned to look, and saw a pile of corpses huddled in the corner of the open area around the door. Something about them seemed off, and after a moment she realized that there were no blood trails. The bodies had not been dragged there.

“What is this?” the Captain asked, gesturing at the corpses.

“We executed them. Ensign’s orders,” one of the guards responded nonchalantly.

“Executed?” Agosto repeated, as though she had not quite heard right. She marched to the griff, raising her talon “Senior sailor your name, inside this building are artillery shells, each of which weighs a hundred kilos. If you deprive me of the physical labor of the prisoners, who do you think will carry the shells?”

The sailor seemed to pale as he realized the answer.

“So go tell the Commodore that I want the prisoners to stay alive.”

The sailor ran off, realizing it would be best to get out of her sight. Putting the display of incompetence behind her, Agosto pulled the doors open. The hinges creaked slightly, and then gravity took hold, dragging the doors outward. A smile grew at the corners of the Captain’s beak as she beheld what was before her. The floor simply disappeared, going down for several floors. At the bottom of the underground room were crates. Thousands of large wooden crates, each of which housed a shell that fit her guns.

The last hints of her dismay at the events outside left Agosto as she looked at the stockpiles, her mind running the numbers. Spread out below her were enough shells to last months.